


Do you know what freedom means?

by Sherlly750



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: American Revolution, Angst, Boys In Love, Christmas Eve, Duelling, F/M, Falling In Love, First Love, Historical, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death, Revolutionary War, True Love, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-06-07 07:43:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15214403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sherlly750/pseuds/Sherlly750
Summary: The British gave up and the United States became a state before which an unknown but probably interesting future was painted.For now, everything was difficult, but over the years, the state will settle down - it will become strong and fully independent.It is a pity that he will not have a chance to see it.





	Do you know what freedom means?

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! English is not my first language and mistakes may appear. If you see something, write to me about it! ')  
> It's mostly Lams. I will add a chapter once weekly.  
> Enjoy!

John Laurens didn't have a good beginning in his life. Everything came to him with some resistance and great hesitation, which made it difficult for him always.  
He couldn't say he was a happy child. He never liked to mention his youth years, according to most people of carefree youth.

He never needed anything, but he felt terribly lonely. In the area of their home, there was no lack of other boys his age, but somewhere in the middle John felt that he simply did not fit here. Other children created various games and movement games together. They were loud, joyful and practically all the time full of energy. Laurens was always calm and preferred to sit under a tree, reading a book or drawing, and sometimes climbing a tree to hide in his spreading crown. Among the leaves he was, it became less apparent, separated from the rest of the world and seemingly safer than it really was. Mother always shouted at him, fearing he would fall.

Around their home in South Carolina, was a garden where his favorite, very special tree grew. John does not remember exactly what species it was, but when he was still a child, it seemed huge. Certainly it had to be quite old. It had thick and branchy branches, almost encouraging the young boy to spend most of his free time on them. The rugged bark made it easier for him to climb, allowing Jack to be on the tree in less than a minute.

When his sister appeared in the world, everything changed. He felt like he was completely put to the background. No one really praised his new and better drawings, nor did he care much for his fate. After a while, John's style of drawing changed a lot, first in an excessively depicting reality and entering into its smallest details, the least visible to most people, and later it created its opposite. Bright things turned to dark, good to bad, and live to dead.

After a while, apparently his drawings ceased to deserve praise. They have become skewed and lifeless, in the same way as himself.

A lone, five-year-old boy hiding on the trees, which has been adapted to the world of adults around him. He had to pretend to be someone who he wasn't and who understood more than his peers. He maintained the seriousness to survive.

Years passed, and his father kept bothering him with his studies, or looking for a suitable partner for the future, because "that's right and you're ready for it". He didn't feel that way and for some reason he thought he would never be ready for something like that. Stable relationship? The women seemed to him lying and empty, although of course he knew that not all of them were, and there were really special "the only ones", but there was still the point that he would not be able to recognize any of them as more than ordinary friend. He constantly tried to keep distance from the opposite sex, in the case of direct confrontation he felt trapped and embarrassed.

It would be difficult to admit it now, as the years passed, but it was then that he fell into an even deeper, more chronic and troublesome depression that had a impact on his future. Perhaps it wasn't so much that he lost the will to live, but to any action.

His drawings had already let him know that something was wrong with him, and it definitely was, but no one really paid much attention to it. He could not smile at anyone sincerely or without direct coercion. He wasn't sure what to do with himself. The world crashing, losing the remaining colors that still remained to him until then, and taking any action in Lauren's eyes was pointless.

He always been the one who was lost.

He couldn't be who he had always wanted to be. He felt that he was missing his own calling, and the problem was still women. He was still not completely interested in that and no one else could understand at all. He realized that he was a real freak of nature, and if anyone found out ... He didn't want to think about it.

The curse of sodomie fell on him, although it was not until some time later that he learned how the majority of society describes him and others like him.

People like him were forced to hide their own identity and they had to pretend to be someone who none of them really was. To tell the truth, there were many of them.

They enslaved their minds in their own hated bodies. Other people telling them that they were something disgusting, unnatural, and not having the right to exist. They should just never be born.

He had to constantly be a watchful observer and be careful not to say something that would work to his detriment. Those who say too much, end up dead, certainly so much faster than him.

Being yourself in his case would be punished with death.

And his father continued to push on him.

Some time later, they left for London. John naively thought it would change something, and maybe even that he would be able to start completely from beginning.

Better work for his father, a bigger home for his sisters, brothers, him and his mother, and a very good school for John and many more new opportunities. Yes, Laurens wanted to appreciate the new opportunity for the first time in his life. He recognized leaving his place of birth is a new and better beginning.

John always dreamed of studying medicine because he was very successful when it came to chemistry and biology, he liked it and he really wanted to do then, and maybe even become a doctor and work that way for the rest of his days? Now he will not be able to find out about it, because unfortunately he could enjoy the longed-for direction of studies only for two years, because later his father forced him to take up studying and studying law.

He hated it sincerely and with all his heart.

The law was not his field, because how can you turn a boy who knows a science into a humanist?  
If don't look at it all, he still was tried to make Henry Laurens really proud of him once. He spent far much time learning, because he wanted to be better, know more and show that he was not useless.

The whole situation with Martha was something to him, like a nail to a coffin. He was too young and terribly stupid.

He had everything quite decidedly, but with the departure of his mother to the other world, he also went away, though sometimes he felt disappointed that he was away only mentally. The emptiness inside did not fill up with alcohol, which did not give him even the dream of oblivion.

He was again suspended in a senseless existence, but with an internal compulsion to act. He had to do something not to go crazy because he wanted to be somebody and show the whole world that John Laurens could be someone important and fighting for something, what he believed for the first time in his life.

Everything prevented him from lacking specific goals and plans for the future, which caused him to automatically create certain locks and walls that would not allow him to fully develop his own skills and stimulate his enthusiasm. His fears about possible failure frustrated him.

He left for New York, promising his family that he would try to write frequently and visit them someday, if he could, because despite his trauma to his father, he still loved him in his own way and appreciated younger siblings.

In New York he began his military career, his new goal was to grant the right to freedom for all of slaves.

He wanted all people to be equal, and then maybe he too would stop having a reason to be ashamed.

He wanted to start by stopping the terrible and inhumane treatment of people with a dark skin color.

The Black battalion could have been useful during the revolution, so he hoped that he would be allowed to form this special unit. Under his command. He couldn't wait for it.

  
_He remembered it all, just as if it had happened like yesterday._  
_And after a few good and bad years passed, the Black battalion was created and even took part in the battle._  
_John in his life fulfilled at least one of his dreams._  
  


His daughter sat on the carpet in front of a stone fireplace, playing with dolls that she got from General Washington. It is very nice that he gave her the gift completely selflessly.

For the first time they could have dinner together, like an ordinary and full family, as if they did not have to leave later. Of course, he means about his wife and little girl.

The light coming from the candles on the Christmas tree formed numerous bright reflections on the ginger hair of a little girl. People said that she was really similar to him. He couldn't say no to that. She had hair and eyes after him, but almost she looked the same as her mother. She certainly had the same smile as her mother.

He could not believe that he was allowed to leave the position, while the revolution almost burned. Everyone felt that the end of war was slowly coming. The general allowed him to meet his family on Christmas and return to service only after them. He got from him three days off.

He was happy that he could invite his child and wife to a common Christmas Eve, although he did not have direct contact with her so far.

He sometimes wrote letters to Martha, asking quite often about her well-being,  
sure that there was nothing missing her and her little girl. He always tried to send some money to his own means, eventually they had to have something to live off.

Despite the passage of several years, he still felt overwhelmingly guilty.

He did all this for little Eleanor and considered it worth the effort. It was her first family holidays, and at the same time the only meeting with father.

John had planned everything to be able to sit in the chair while Martha, together with the newly married wife of his closest friend Hamilton, talked in the kitchen about motherhood and related sacrifices.  
The younger woman The younger woman didn't have a child yet, but it would probably be with Hamilton, who wants a descendant, preferably a son.

John was sitting in the living room with Alexander then.

Laurens wanted to invite his best friend this year, just as he did last and last. This time he also invited Eliza - Hamilton's wife. Every time, when he invited him, Hamilton has so far, unfortunately he had to say no, but he didn't made Laurens sad so much. In those turbulent years, it was hard, even for a few hours find a peace, let alone all day.

John invited Martha mainly to not be like the fifth wheel at the wagon sharing the lovers (though to a certain extent he was still there). It would be extremely uncomfortable for him.

In addition, Laurens was thinking that his daughter would be happy to a holidays, that she would spend with his father, and he would not be someone like Henry Laurens was for him.

She deserved to know him and know who he was, and that he was not indifferent to her fate.  
In fact, Ellen was born by accident, completely unplanned.

John never wanted to start a family with a woman or look for a partner. If someone told him that by chance he would end in one bed with a woman, he would rather die with laughter and embarrassment.

It came out as it came out.

He just drank too much one night at the London bar, and now he took on the consequences of the mistakes he made in his youth.

In that time, almost three years later, he was grateful for that little girl. He could have considered her almost the best thing that had ever happened to him.

She became important to him, and he loved her with all his heart. Unfortunately, he has not seen her so long, because he decided that her place is with her mother. That was definitely better for her, and John was able to wait until tonight to see her for the first time with his own eyes.

He was looking over her with pride and delight, he was smiling every time she looked at him. She was for him like lovely ray of sunshine with unruly curls.

Alexander sipped a mild liquor from his glass, or rather he wet his mouth in it, because in the holidays it was not really good to drink too much, and certainly not on eyes of the child. At least according to the rules that John set.

"Do not drink too much Alexander today, please," he said as soon as the man settled into his living room.

Jack gave Alex a cheerful and gentle smile.

"You know what, Laurens?" Hamilton asked after a long silence.

"I have no idea, Alexander," he replied with a hint of amusement in his voice, and it did not escape the attention of a younger man who grimaced slightly and looked at him an disgusted.

"Would you be able to maintain relative seriousness at least once?"

"Who says that ..." John muttered under his breath. "Of course, so what did you want to ask me, my dearest?" He said a little louder.

  
"What does snow look like?" Hamilton asked, with one hundred percent seriousness and curiosity in his voice.  
Jack observed that when a man tries to learn something that interests him, he tilts his head in a funny way.  
He considered this a rather interesting phenomenon.  
John must have had a strange expression on face, because after a while Alexander began to explain to him  
everything at almost a dizzying pace. "I don't know if you remember, but I was born in Charlestown, in the Caribbean. And you rather understand that snow is something impossible there. In America, too. Here are probably not too many chances, but you lived in London for some time ..." Alex continued, suspending his voice at the end and giving the opportunity to end the thread to Laurens.

"Snow is something beautiful, Alexander. Terribly cold and unpleasant to touch, but when you looking at it you know that it is one of the unique and beautiful wonders of nature. Each petal is different, like man or love. Real and tangible, different from all others." Laurens said, looking at the flames dancing in the fireplace, and when he finished, the two men stayed quiet, looking at each other with something difficult to identify, reflected in the they's eyes, like flames from the fireplace.

That was beautiful, but also fleeting.

 

 


End file.
